IRAQ - Efforts To Avert Turkish Move.

Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki on Oct. 23 ordered the closure of PKK's operation in northern Iraq in an effort to prevent a Turkish invasion. This came after intense international pressure to crack down on the PKK - a separatist group which Ankara blames for the deaths of almost 50 civilians and soldiers inside Turkey in recent weeks - and avoid destabilisation of Iraq's only peaceful region.

A top-level Iraqi team headed by Defence Minister Gen. Abdel-Qader Jassem was in Ankara on Oct. 25-26 and urged Turkey to accept a Baghdad offer to "pacify, isolate and disrupt" the PKK - short of military action. Ankara later said it was not satisfied with the offer. Turkey has moved up to 100,000 troops, fighter jets, helicopters, and heavy equipment to the bordering provinces of Hakkari and Sirnak.

At a news conference during an official visit to Romania, Erdogan on Oct. 25 said: "One would question why America has come to Iraq from thousands of miles away... Right now, the United States, as our strategic ally, is in a position to act along with us. We acted along with them in Afghanistan..."

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is due in Ankara on Nov. 2 in fresh US efforts to avert a big attack and to attend a Nov. 2-3 conference for Iraq and its neighbours in Istanbul. Signals suggest there will be no major Turkish incursion into Iraq before Erdogan meets President Bush in Washington on Nov. 5. Small-scale raids are to continue as the Turkish military targets PKK bases 20-40 km in northern Iraq's near-impregnable Qandil mountains. The Turkish media on Oct. 26 said 40 PKK rebels had been killed in those raids. Observers say the US has no quarrel with such raids so long as they do not provoke wider conflict with the KRG or with American forces.

PKK attacks suggest the group is adopting new tactics to raise the pressure on Turkey in the hope of forcing Ankara to enter into peace talks. Over the past few years the PKK has pursued a two-front strategy: urban bombing in western Turkey and a rural insurgency in the mountainous south-east. During its first campaign in 1984-99, it sought to control territory in south-eastern Turkey. During the early 1990s, it staged large-scale attacks on military outposts. But that practice was abandoned as the military began to inflict heavy casualties in hot pursuits. Through a scorched earth policy, Turkish forces gained the initiative.

By the time the PKK announced it was abandoning armed struggle in 1999, it had already effectively been defeated. Political pressure had forced Syria, its main state sponsor, to withdraw its support. The decision to return to violence in June 2004 was taken despite opposition of many PKK field commanders, who argued the group was too weak, lacked a state sponsor and had only about 3,500 militants, from 8,000 in the 1990s.

When it resumed its insurgency, the PKK tacitly acknowledged weakness through its choice of tactics. It reduced field units to six-eight militants, compared to 15-20 in the 1990s, and avoided direct confrontation with the Turkish military.

Turkish analysts say Ankara will not engage in a full-scale war which could damage its relations with the US. One Turkish columnist wrote: "If Ankara intervenes in northern Iraq, it will be the beginning of the break-up of Turkey".